By Lisa Cappelloni | Posted November 5 2010
Guest blogger Lisa Cappelloni is a freelance writer who writes about health, food and travel. Her food blog is www.myvegetarianfriend.wordpress.com.
Kids are consumers just like the rest of us, but when it comes to selecting school lunches, we want to keep their consumption in check. With soaring rates of childhood obesity–nearly one in five kids is too heavy–controlling poor eating habits is an urgent national priority. Fortunately, influencing kids to make healthier school meal choices turns out to be surprisingly simple, new research shows.
Cornell University professors Brian Wansink and David Just are the co-directors of the Center for Behavioral Economics in Child Nutrition Programs, established on October 12th of this year. The center studies the impact of making inexpensive changes to lunchroom settings without altering the actual menus. Behavioral economics- combining psychology and economics to understand how thoughts and memory guide consumers- is the driving force behind nudging kids in the healthy direction.
On October 12, the USDA announced $2 million in grants to fund this intriguing new strategy, by establishing the Cornell center and 14 other research projects in 11 states. “USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service and Economic Research Service (ERS) have partnered to undertake a bold initiative to help schools and child care facilities promote healthy eating for our children by conducting innovative, promising, and practical research,” said Vilsack in a press announcement. “Findings from this emerging field of research – behavioral economics – could lead to significant improvements in the diets of millions of children across America.”
What’s the goal? “The object of using behavioral economics in school lunch rooms is to guide choices in a way that is subtle enough that children are unaware of the mechanism,” write the authors to the university’s news source, the Chronicle Online. The 2009 Smarter Lunchroom Initiative, on which the center is based, uses lunchroom case studies to determine how kids best respond to cafeteria modifications. The low-cost, low-effort initiative found several simple changes successful:
*Be Attractive: Get kids to eat more fruit by placing fruits in an attractive basket far from pre-packaged snacks and displayed in an open, distinct area. The New York Post reported that placing fruit out of steel trays and into a bowl with a light on increased consumption by 186 percent in two weeks, according to Wansink.
*On the Clock: The best bet against the burden of lengthy hot lunch lines? Healthy pre-packaged ‘grab and go’ drinks and meals that fill kids up- without the wait.
*Prime Real Estate: Move pre-cut vegetable sticks and whole fruits next to the cash register while placing unhealthy snacks behind the counter, requiring that kids specifically request them.
The professors suggest additional lunchroom modifications, including installing vending machines far away from the cafeteria, offering a choice of vegetables instead of just one, placing the salad bar in a convenient location, renaming foods with ‘cool’ names (referring to carrots as ‘x-ray vision carrots’ yielded a 62 percent increase in consumption) and requiring that students pay in cash for unhealthy items like sodas and treats in free or prepaid lunches.
CONNECT THE DOTS
For more information, visit the Cornell Center for Behavioral Economics in Child Nutrition Programs’ website. Also check out the Professor Wansink’s highly acclaimed book, Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think. The author has received a $1 million dollar grant from the National Institute of Health through the federal government’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Also take a look at “Healthy School Days,” which spotlights initiatives and ideas to help families at every income level maintain nutritious eating habits through the school year.
The Food Pyramid is going to change this year, but the government website remains a great resource for letting parents and kids know what to eat each day. A fun and informative site for kids is kidnetic.com, developed by the International Food Information Council. It’s geared to 9-13 year olds with some information for parents, too.
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